Studies show that less frequent, all-injectable treatment for HIV is safe and preferred by adolescents

A multinational clinical trial co-led by investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia found the long-term HIV treatment regimen is safe and favored by adolescents.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

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First and corresponding author on one study and co-senior author on the other, Aditya Gaur, MD, St. Jude Department of Infectious Diseases, who co-leads the IMPAACT 2017 study, also referred to as the More Options for Children and Adolescents (MOCHA) study.

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Credit: Courtesy of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – January 15, 2026) Adolescents with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Botswana, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda and the United States who received the injectable intramuscular antiviral medications cabotegravir and rilpivirine for nearly a year after being switched from daily oral HIV medications, which they had been on most of their life, experienced no major safety concerns, had continued viral suppression and greatly preferred the new treatment method. The findings, published recently in two companion papers in The Lancet HIV, are the latest results from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) Network clinical trial, which is co-led by investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the United States and the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.

 

“This is the first time in their lives these adolescents could formally stop taking daily oral medications for HIV treatment and just get two injections every eight weeks,” said first and corresponding author on one study and co-senior author on the other, Aditya Gaur, MD, St. Jude Department of Infectious Diseases, who co-leads the IMPAACT 2017 study, also referred to as the More Options for Children and Adolescents (MOCHA) study. “After one year, this treatment approach appears safe and is tolerated by and acceptable to adolescents.”

 

All injectable treatment regimen is safe

 

Adolescents with HIV currently take daily oral medications to keep the virus in check. However, taking daily medications, for any chronic disease is not easy and many struggle with medication adherence. Maintaining consistent medication adherence can be challenging, especially for adolescents, underscoring the need for long-lasting injectables.  

 

The published companion papers describing the IMPAACT 2017/MOCHA study constitute the longest and largest described multinational experience to date of this first all-injectable HIV treatment regimen in a diverse group of virologically-suppressed adolescents. Results show that after 48 weeks, there were no safety concerns, and viral loads remained suppressed.

 

“We observed no unexpected safety signals from the first-ever all-injectable combination retroviral regimen in this adolescent population,” Gaur said. “We saw the expected concentrations of each drug known to be effective in adults and continued virological control.”

 

When long-acting injectable antiviral medications emerged as an alternative to daily oral medications, it was a major milestone for prevention and treatment of HIV. This new report from the IMPAACT 2017/MOCHA study assessed the safety, antiviral activity and pharmacokinetics of the first all-injectable HIV treatment regimen of cabotegravir and rilpivirine given intramuscularly once every two months in adolescents with HIV from around the world. This treatment regimen was already approved for adolescents with HIV who are 12 years or older weighing 35 kilograms or more by the US Food and Drug Administration and a growing number of other regulatory agencies from around the world based on prior clinical findings from the IMPAACT 2017/MOCHA study, which the companion papers further support.

 

Finding out what type of treatment adolescents want

 

Learning that the all-injectable antiviral HIV treatment regimen is safe for patients is important, however, the therapy will only be effective if patients are willing to take it. Therefore, led by Elizabeth Lowenthal based at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the researchers assessed how well patients accepted and tolerated the injectable medications. At 48 weeks, 100% of participants reported they would rather get the injectable regimen than the oral medications. In addition, of the 144 participants originally enrolled in the study, the majority (140) continued the treatment through the reported 48-week period, indicating a high level of acceptability.

 

“It is very exciting to enter an era of long-acting medications for HIV,” Gaur said. “Thanks to the contributions of the study participants, their families, site staff, study team and the collaboration between the NIH, ViiV Healthcare and Johnson & Johnson who made this study possible, we can now offer patients more options, such as these injectables, which provide freedom from daily medications and can be tailored based on patients’ preferences.”

 

For more information about the study, please see ClinicalTrials.gov using the identifier NCT03497676.

 

Authors and funding

The authors of the injectable-only safety study are Kristin Baltrusaitis, St. Jude; Edmund Capparelli and Brookie Best, University of California San Diego; John Moye, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Dwight Yin and Ellen Townley, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Gaerolwe Masheto, Botswana Harvard Health Partnership; Sarah Buisson and Rachel Scheckter, FHI 360; Conn Harrington, ViiV Healthcare; Mark Marzinke, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Elizabeth Lowenthal, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Andi Ace and Kyle Whitson, Frontier Science Foundation; Shawn Ward and Ryan Milligan, Frontier Science Foundation; Jenny Huang, Amy Cheung and Gilly Roberts, GlaxoSmithKline; Thomas Kakuda and Eileen Birmingham, Johnson & Johnson; Sisinyana Mathiba, University of Witwatersrand; Linda Aurpibul, Chiang Mai University; Violet Korutaro, Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation Uganda; Christiana Smith, University of Colorado School of Medicine; Faeezah Patel, University of Witwatersrand; Evette Moodley, CAPRISA; and Carolyn Bolton Moore, Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.

 

The study was supported by funding from ViiV Healthcare and Johnson & Johnson.

 

The other authors of the preference study include first and corresponding author Elizabeth Lowenthal, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The study’s other co-senior author is Carolyn Bolton-Moore, Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia/University of Alabama Birmingham. Additional authors include Jennifer Chapman, Chermiqua Tsosie and Martina Vaca, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Kaleb Branch, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; Kristin Baltrusaitis and Grace Kovic, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Sanjna Merchant, University of Pennsylvania College of Arts and Sciences; Barbara Heckman and Andi Ace, Frontier Science Foundation; Rodica Van Solingen-Ristea, Johnson & Johnson; Conn Harrington and Irina Kolobova, Viiv Healthcare; Dwight Yin and Ellen Townley, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Michael Whitton and Sarah Buisson, FHI 360 IMPAACT Operations Center; Allison Agwu, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Christiana Smith, University of Colorado School of Medicine; Mary Paul, Baylor College of Medicine; Avy Violari, University of Witwatersrand; Evette Moodley, Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa; Maxensia Owor, MU-JHU Care Limited; Kulkanya Chokephaibulkit, Mahidol University; Samantha Fry, FAMCRU; Jennifer Jao, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Charles Mitchell, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

 

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (UM1AI068632, UM1AI068616, UM1AI106716 and HHSN275201800001I) and ViiV Healthcare Inc.

 

Viiv Healthcare

Viiv Healthcare is a global specialist HIV company dedicated to delivering advances in treatment and care for people living with HIV and for people who could benefit from HIV prevention. For more information, visit viivhealthcare.com.

 

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats, and cures childhood catastrophic diseases. From cancer to life-threatening blood disorders, neurological conditions, and infectious diseases, St. Jude is dedicated to advancing cures and means of prevention through groundbreaking research and compassionate care. Through global collaborations and innovative science, St. Jude is working to ensure that every child, everywhere, has the best chance at a healthy future.  To learn more, visit stjude.org, read St. Jude Progress, a digital magazine, and follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.

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Journal

The Lancet

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Acceptability and tolerability of long-acting injectable cabotegravir–rilpivirine in adolescents with HIV-1 (IMPAACT 2017/MOCHA): 48-week results of a multicentre, open-label, non-comparative phase 1/2 trial Safety, antiviral activity, and pharmacokinetics of long-acting injectable cabotegravir–rilpivirine in virologically suppressed adolescents living with HIV-1 (IMPAACT 2017/MOCHA): 48-week results of a multinational, phase 1/2, single-arm study

Article Publication Date

15-Jan-2026

 

Decoding how pear trees are pruned: 3D insights pave the way for automated orchards

Nanjing Agricultural University The Academy of Science

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(a) The shoot length was calculated by summing the distances between neighboring points after skeletonization of the shoot point cloud. (b) The shoot angle was determined based on the inclination of the minimum enclosing box surrounding the shoot. (c) The volume of the canopy was calculated using the method of the minimum convex hull, which approximates the spatial boundary of the shoot.

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Credit: The authors

By aligning three-dimensional point clouds of the same trees across consecutive growing seasons, the team was able to accurately identify which shoots were removed during pruning and how these decisions relate to annual shoot growth.

Pear trees are widely cultivated across temperate regions, and dormant pruning is essential for maintaining canopy structure, balancing vegetative and reproductive growth, and preventing problems such as poor light penetration or alternate bearing. However, pruning remains one of the most expensive orchard operations, accounting for a substantial share of annual production costs. While mechanized pruning tools exist, they often rely on non-selective cutting, which can reduce fruit yield and quality. Intelligent, selective pruning requires detailed knowledge of tree structure and shoot growth—information that has been difficult to obtain in complex canopies using conventional imaging or manual measurements.

A study (DOI:10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100136) published in Plant Phenomics on 13 November 2025 by Yue Mu’s team, Nanjing Agricultural University, provides a critical foundation for intelligent and automated pruning systems, offering new opportunities to reduce labor dependence while improving precision and consistency in orchard management.

Using repeated 3D point cloud acquisitions of the same pear trees before and after pruning and across consecutive growing seasons, the researchers first applied a two-step alignment strategy—coarse registration followed by fine Iterative Closest Point (ICP) optimization—to precisely align paired point clouds, with alignment accuracy quantified by root mean square error (RMSE). After removing overlapping regions, shoots were segmented using density-based clustering, and shoot architectural parameters, including shoot number, length, and angle, were automatically extracted and validated against manual measurements. The alignment results showed that average RMSE across whole trees was reduced to 0.032 m after registration, with no significant differences between cultivars but clear differences among tree architectures, where the “2 + 1” architecture achieved the highest accuracy (RMSE = 0.025 m). Registration accuracy was also strongly influenced by the time interval between scans, with point clouds collected shortly before and after pruning showing significantly lower errors than those separated by a full year of natural growth. The extracted shoot parameters closely matched manual measurements, with strong correlations for shoot number, total shoot length, shoot angle, and individual shoot length (R² = 0.82–0.92), demonstrating the robustness of the method despite some segmentation errors in densely packed canopies. Applying this pipeline to analyze pruning outcomes revealed that tree architecture, rather than cultivar, was the dominant factor shaping pruning characteristics, influencing pruned shoot number, individual shoot length, canopy volume, and shoot length density. Spatial overlap analysis further showed that most pruned shoots corresponded to annual (one-year-old) shoots, whose angle and length distributions closely matched those of pruned shoots, indicating that pruning decisions largely reflect annual shoot growth patterns. Quantitatively, annual shoots accounted for about 79% of pruned shoot number and over 92% of total pruning length, with the majority exhibiting large inclination angles. Overall, manual dormant pruning followed a highly consistent pattern across years, primarily targeting upright annual shoots through thinning, while a smaller proportion of perennial shoots was selectively removed to maintain canopy structure.

By quantifying what experienced pruners do intuitively, this research provides a practical foundation for automated pruning. Instead of attempting to evaluate every branch in a complex canopy, intelligent systems could focus primarily on identifying annual shoots with specific angle and length characteristics. This simplification could greatly accelerate the development of robotic pruning tools, reduce labor costs, and improve consistency in orchard management.

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References

DOI

10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100136

Original Source URl

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100136

Funding information

This work was co-financed by the Major Science and Technology Projects of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (2024A02006-3), the Jiangsu Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Fund (No. CX (22)2025 and No. CX (23)1011), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32001980).

About Plant Phenomics

Plant Phenomics is dedicated to publishing novel research that will advance all aspects of plant phenotyping from the cell to the plant population levels using innovative combinations of sensor systems and data analytics. Plant Phenomics aims also to connect phenomics to other science domains, such as genomics, genetics, physiology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, statistics, mathematics, and computer sciences. Plant Phenomics should thus contribute to advance plant sciences and agriculture/forestry/horticulture by addressing key scientific challenges in the area of plant phenomics.

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Journal

Plant Phenomics

DOI

10.1016/j.plaphe.2025.100136 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Structural parameter determination and pruning pattern analysis of pear tree shoots for dormant pruning

 

Biochar reshapes hidden soil microbes that capture carbon dioxide in farmland

Biochar Editorial Office, Shenyang Agricultural University

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Calvin cycle driven autotrophic CO2-fixation traits and autotrophic microbial communities in paddy (Anthrosol) and upland (Vertisol) soils: rhizosphere effects and impacts of biochar

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Credit: Huimei Jiang, Shuyue Han, Haojun Zhang, Tianchu Liu, Shihao Huang, Xiaoyu Zhu, Jingwan Fang, Jing Mu & Xiaomin Zhu

Soils do more than store carbon from plant residues. Beneath our feet, vast communities of microbes quietly pull carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into organic matter, helping regulate climate and sustain agricultural productivity. A new study reveals that this overlooked microbial process is strongly influenced by soil type, plant roots, and biochar, a carbon rich material increasingly promoted for sustainable farming.

In research published in Biochar, scientists examined how autotrophic soil microbes that fix carbon dioxide through the Calvin cycle respond to biochar additions in two contrasting agricultural systems: flooded rice paddies and well aerated upland croplands. The team focused on key microbial genes, known as cbbL and cbbM, that encode the enzyme RubisCO, which drives biological carbon fixation.

“Our results show that paddy soils, especially around plant roots, are hotspots for microbial carbon fixation,” said corresponding author Xiaomin Zhu. “These microbes are actively capturing carbon dioxide in ways that have been largely ignored in soil carbon research.”

Using field experiments in China, the researchers combined molecular analyses, enzyme activity measurements, and microbial community sequencing. They found that microbes carrying the cbbL gene dominated carbon fixation in both soil types, but paddy soils supported much higher overall activity. Flooded conditions, shifting redox states, and rice root exudates created ideal microenvironments for autotrophic microbes to thrive.

The rhizosphere, the narrow zone of soil surrounding roots, emerged as a critical zone for carbon capture. In paddy fields, RubisCO enzyme activity was consistently higher near roots than in bulk soil, confirming that plant microbial interactions amplify soil carbon assimilation.

Biochar, produced by heating crop residues in low oxygen conditions, played a complex role. Rather than simply increasing carbon fixation across the board, biochar selectively reshaped microbial communities. In paddy soils, biochar reduced the abundance of microbes carrying the cbbM gene, which are less common but closely linked to high RubisCO activity under low oxygen conditions.

“Biochar does not just add carbon to soil,” Zhu explained. “It changes which microbes are active and how carbon flows through the soil system. That can create tradeoffs between different microbial pathways of carbon fixation.”

The study also revealed strong links between microbial carbon fixation and nitrogen cycling. Soil nitrogen forms, redox conditions, and enzyme activities emerged as major drivers controlling which microbial groups dominated. In paddy soils, inorganic nitrogen and redox potential strongly regulated microbial carbon fixation, while in upland soils, microbial biomass and labile carbon and nitrogen pools played a larger role.

Importantly, the researchers found that carbon fixation by these microbes was tightly coupled with other biogeochemical processes, including nitrogen reduction, iron cycling, methane metabolism, and even arsenic detoxification. This highlights the broader ecological importance of autotrophic microbes beyond carbon storage alone.

“These microbes sit at the crossroads of many nutrient cycles,” said Zhu. “Managing soils to support them could deliver multiple benefits, from climate mitigation to improved soil health and crop resilience.”

The findings suggest that strategies aimed at enhancing soil carbon sequestration should account for microbial pathways that operate independently of plant inputs. Biochar remains a promising tool, but its impacts depend strongly on soil type, water management, and nutrient status.

By uncovering how biochar and farming systems shape microbial carbon fixation, the study provides new insight into how agricultural soils can be managed to better support climate smart agriculture and long term carbon storage.

 

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Journal Reference: Jiang, H., Han, S., Zhang, H. et al. Calvin cycle driven autotrophic CO2-fixation traits and autotrophic microbial communities in paddy (Anthrosol) and upland (Vertisol) soils: rhizosphere effects and impacts of biochar. Biochar 7, 118 (2025). 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-025-00538-z  

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About Biochar

Biochar is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field. 

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Journal

Biochar

DOI

10.1007/s42773-025-00538-z 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Calvin cycle driven autotrophic CO2-fixation traits and autotrophic microbial communities in paddy (Anthrosol) and upland (Vertisol) soils: rhizosphere effects and impacts of biochar